from the federal-bureau-of-(deliberate)-ineptitude dept

The FBI's assessment of its drones' impact on the privacy of Americans has never been made public. It's been nearly a decade since it first deployed drones, and the agency has yet to provide anything on the subject. FOIA requests (there are several out there) have been greeted with nothing -- every single page withheld under the government's go-to exception, b(5).

Six months ago, the Federal Bureau of Investigation refused to release its plans to tackle privacy risks posed by drone surveillance. Now the agency claims it can’t track them down at all. So does the one Justice Department office responsible for making sure such reports get filed in the first place.

As Shawn Musgrave of MuckRock points out, the FBI's continued secrecy runs contrary to both the FOIA and its own obligations to the general public in terms of its surveillance programs' impact on the American public.

By design... PIA reports are meant for public consumption. They are supposed to candidly outline potential privacy risks for a given piece of software, data collection initiative or other technology, as well as the steps taken to address such risks. And unless an agency presents a good case otherwise, PIAs are supposed to be published online.

MuckRock refiled its previously-rebuffed FOIA request, adding a demand for any internal memos regarding the FBI's decision to not only withhold this impact assessement in full, but its refusal to post its PIAs online per standard operating procedure. It sent the same request to the Office of Privacy and Civil Liberties -- the oversight agency tasked with ensuring agencies like the FBI don't cut the public out of the loop by withholding required impact assessments. The OPCL also had no idea where this document -- that it is charged with obtaining and holding -- might have gone.

Last week, the Justice Department confirmed that neither the FBI nor OPCL had been able to find anything despite “an adequate, reasonable search for such records.”

So… did the FBI toss the troublesome document into the nearest shredder (as if it isn't stored online somewhere within its internal network)? Or is it simply uninterested with fulfilling the minimal requirements of its accountability to the public? The latter appears to be the likeliest answer. In an update to MuckRock's original post about the MIA PIA, Shawn Musgrave reports that the DOJ has issued a statement suggesting MuckRock go fuck itself try the same thing that resulted in zero released pages six months ago.

Two hours after publication and in the wake of three FOIA requests, the Justice Department declined to clarify whether the FBI has analyzed potential privacy risks posed by its drones. “The questions you raised are best addressed through FOIA,” wrote Peter Carr, a Justice Department public affairs specialist, in reply to an email asking if the FBI had filed drone privacy impact assessments, “and it is my understanding that you sought similar information already through our FOIA office.”

"Unclear" is being generous. The original FOIA response looked like this:

And the most that could be determined from this "response" is that the FBI's drone impact assessment contains at least 26 pages and, at one point, was somewhere where the feds could actually locate it.

EPIC, which is currently suing the FBI over its refusal to publish its privacy impact assessments, is completely baffled by the collective shrug offered by these two agencies -- one which is supposed to craft and publish its assessments and that's supposed to provide (obviously needed) oversight. Both seem equally uninterested in fulfilling the requirements of their jobs.

EPIC lawyers are stumped by the Justice Department’s response to FOIA requests for its drone reports, and particularly the OPCL’s claim not to have any PIA documents.

“They review the privacy impact assessment—that’s part of their responsibility within the Justice Department,” says Ginger McCall, who heads EPIC’s Open Government Project.

Well, transparency and accountability are both part of the three involved agencies' jobs, but none of them seem interested in even creating the appearance of paying lip service to those crucial aspects of their responsibilities to the public. Instead, we get a list of pages the FBI won't let us read, followed by the declaration that the document is missing entirely.

from the keep-digging-carreon dept

Remember that rule number one of the Carreon Effect is that, when someone calls you out on your ridiculous position... just keep digging. And the man behind the effect apparently would like to make sure that his name really does set the gold standard in "just keep digging." Yes, that's right -- the man, the myth, the sheer wackiness of Charles Carreon is back. Except, that is, if you're trying to serve him for bogus threats against you. You may remember Charles Carreon for his famous lawsuit against the Oatmeal and a variety of unrelated other organizations, followed up by threats against parody accounts (doubly amusing, given Carreon's own fondness for parodying others).

While Carreon eventually dropped his lawsuit against Matthew Inman at The Oatmeal, it wasn't before one of the parody bloggers he had threatened filed for declaratory judgment, claiming that his blogging was legal. Carreon quite clearly was threatening the blogger, and had even suggested that he would wait until the attention died down to sue -- which clearly gives the blogger grounds for seeking a declaratory judgment. That, of course, is a separate lawsuit, initiated by the blogger, so Carreon can't just drop it. But what he can do, apparently, is everything possible to avoid being served. The judge's own summary of the situation (via Popehat):

Plaintiff seeks a declaratory judgment that his satirical website does not infringe the trademark defendant has in his own name. Prior to filing a complaint, plaintiff's counsel was in contact with defendant via email. After filing the complaint, defendant and his wife publicly
discussed the pending litigation. Plaintiff's counsel mailed defendant a request for waiver of summons to his address in Tucson, Arizona, which defendant did not execute. Instead, the entire envelope was mailed back to plaintiff, unopened, inside a second envelope. This same sequence of events was repeated after plaintiff filed an amended complaint. At plaintiff's request, the Court issued a summons, and plaintiff hired an Arizona process service company to serve the summons at the residential address. On the first visit, the server announced himself and was told “No thank you,” and left with the papers. On the second and third visits, nobody answered. The process service company then tried to serve the summons and complaint by certified mail, but the package was never claimed.

Of course, during this time that Carreon was hiding out from officially being served, it didn't stop him from continuing to find ways to intimidate the blogger in question. Again, from the judge:

During this time, defendant contacted the general counsel of Walgreens, plaintiff's employer, stating plaintiff had used Walgreens' computer equipment or internet access to create the allegedly actionable website, and implying he might make Walgreens a party to the litigation under a theory of respondeat superior. The demand letter sent to Walgreens contained the same Tucson, Arizona address and email address that plaintiff had been using to attempt service on defendant.

Following that, the blogger's lawyers once again emailed Carreon a copy of the summons, complaint and amended complaint -- including sending it to the address Carreon used to threaten Walgreens... and Carreon ignored that too.

Unfortunately, Carreon seems to be working the system effectively. Because even with all of these obvious attempts to avoid having to actually deal with the lawsuit against him, the judge is asking the blogger and his lawyers to "try harder:"

The process server could easily wait outside the fence for defendant to enter or leave the residence and could then leave the papers in the defendant's presence. Alternatively, the process server may choose to wait near a location defendant is thought to frequent, such as an office or grocery store. If the defendant still refuses to accept the papers, it will be considered sufficient if the “server is in close proximity to the defendant, clearly communicates intent to serve court documents, and makes reasonable efforts to leave the papers with the defendant.”

And with that, the judge refuses to allow the emails to constitute proper service. Public Citizen, who is handling the case pro bono, is asking for donations to help pay for hiring someone to "sit outside Carreon's house until Carreon appears," noting that he's "carrying through on his promise to run up the cost of litigation."

It's unclear what Carreon thinks he's accomplishing here, as he's going to have to face these charges eventually. But, as once again seems clear, his response is to... just keep digging.

from the go-dig dept

We've talked about plenty of examples of musicians doing creative things to connect with fans. One example was Trent Reznor hiding concert tickets in random places around LA, and then mentioning the coordinates on his website, leading fans to scramble and find them. It appears that "underground" musician Emperor X (aka Chad Matheny) is doing something similar, and fitting with his underground status. Ross Pruden points us to the news that Matheny has been recording early versions of new songs he's working on to cassette tapes and then burying them in random places. He'll later reveal the GPS coordinates, and if people can find the tapes (apparently it's not always so easy), they get not just the tape with the music, but also "a secret code that will unlock more music on his website for the rest of the world to hear." In other words, people have incentive to find the tapes not just for themselves, but for other fans as well.

Some will (of course) mock this as a "gimmick," and even Matheny flat-out admits that it's a gimmick -- but it's a "gimmick" that works. It gets his fans excited, it gets some more folks interested in his music, and it makes the whole thing fun. As the article notes, it's sort of a way to bring back the old experience people used to have of trying to track down works from a more obscure artist:

"He's creating an experience that really fits his music, and what it is is that he's an underground musician," Dahlen says. "Back in the day, there'd always be that artist that you were in love with. You had to find all their albums, but they were really unknown, and you would go to used record store after used record store trying to track them down. And then, finally, you find one of their albums in the bin, and you love it more because of all the effort you put into it. You have a stake in this musician now. And that was the wonderful experience about finding people who are off the mainstream. I think it fits perfectly with what he's doing. I think it's kind of brilliant."

This highlights, once again, that the idea behind these actions aren't that everyone should do it this way, but that each artist needs to come up with ideas that really fit with the type of artist they are. Something like this really appears to fit with Matheny and the fans of Emperor X, so it works for him. Other artists need to figure out what works for them as well.

from the in-keyboard-veritas dept

This probably won't come as a surprise to anyone, but saying potentially embarrassing stuff in writing is a hell of a lot easier than saying it in person when you have to watch how people react. That's why people can sometimes be such jerks online. But, it also means that for kids these days it's much easier to have potentially embarrassing conversations, such as asking someone out or dumping them. They just do it all online and don't have to deal with the immediate reactions. Some people, of course, find this horrifying, that people may never learn how to talk directly to others about potentially uncomfortable subjects, while others (mostly those who are uncomfortable talking to others about such things) find it to be quite liberating. Like most things, it seems like the type of thing that is useful in moderation -- as long as people recognize the signal that it sends out as well. For example, when it comes to dating, someone who is attracted to more confident people will actually find it a turnoff to be asked out this way -- meaning that as liberating as it is, it may actually be hurting some people's chances to become too reliant on hiding behind the keyboard. In the end, though, it really is just a tool -- and as people learn to use it appropriately it's hard to see how that's a problem.